Welcome to Fantasy Baseball Cafe!

Fantasy baseball has been around for decades. Rotisserie baseball is the first
popular form of fantasy baseball as we know it today, but as the years have
passed, fantasy baseball has taken on many different scoring formats. The
community here, at the Fantasy Baseball Cafe, is familiar with a wide variety
of scoring formats, draft styles and even keeper and dynasty league games.
We're also intimately familiar with daily games, which have grown in popularity
in recent years. This is your home to writing provided by serious, experienced
and accurate experts. In addition to the articles provided here, the forums are
home to baseball thirsty fantasy gamers who are always up to talk strategy. The
Fantasy Baseball Cafe is home to all your fantasy baseball needs.

Projected Win Total: 88The Mariners rate as the fourth best team per FanGraphs' projections. However, cracks in the offense leave them ranked 10th here at Fantasy Baseball Café. The lineup is an impro...
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Projected Win Total: 85After decades of desolation, the Pirates have pieced together a perennial contender. The lineup is a big strength. Not only are the hitters dynamic, they also supply excellent d...
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Projected Win Total: 81The World Champion Giants will return a very similar roster to last season, but they aren't the best team in their division. Honestly, they weren't last season either. Pablo San...
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In an ideal world, there are 30 closers in major-league baseball at any given time, because there are 30 major-league teams. (Mind. Blown.) However, there are more than 30 closers each year, due to in...
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Projected Win Total: 80After winning a division best 96 games, projection systems do not expect the Orioles to repeat. The lineup should continue to mash despite the departure of Nelson Cruz. It's the...
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Projected Win Total: 82It feels good to talk about the Yankees as just another baseball team. The skein of immortality has fled the Bronx. Whether this is a temporary setback or a new age of baseball...
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Projected Win Total: 81The NL East is a mess. The Nationals are in pole position with one of the best rosters in baseball. You'll also find the Phillies and Braves stalled out. Both clubs will struggl...
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Projected Win Total: 81The Mets are supposed to be pivoting back towards contention, but it's clear that the franchise is still a financial wreck. A club in their market should easily exceed a nine fi...
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In rotisserie and head-to-head categories formats, stolen bases are a key part of fantasy lineups that can't be ignored. However, there isn't as much of a premium placed on finding stolen bases in dra...
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Don't worry, Fantasy Baseball Cafe is still bringing you season long league
coverage. In fact, we're bringing you better season long league coverage than
the site has ever seen before. We're also welcoming you to dip your toe into
the daily game pool. I assure you, the water is perfect swimming/relaxing
temperature, and the transition from your comfort zone to a new fantasy game is
fun and can be achieved in a pain-free manner.

All of the daily baseball experts on this site were once novices. We haven't
forgotten our beginning days of daily gaming. They were days of experimenting
-- not in a 60's sort of way -- and determining what worked and what didn't.
We're now here to pass on our knowledge in order to help you avoid the growing
pains we went through. We've gone from fumbling through the mass of stats to
whittling out the excess and honing in on what's really important. In other
words, your leap from the land of familiarity to a brave new world shouldn't be
viewed as daunting. We're here to help in the form of articles, conversation on
the forums and podcasts. Whatever your preferred medium for getting
information, we've got you covered.

As I stated above, adding daily games to your mix of fantasy baseball gaming is
fun! Daily baseball will further your understanding of the real life game of
baseball. Seriously, you'll become a more knowledgeable fan playing daily
baseball games. Members of a platoon and backup catchers aren't always in the
daily baseball mix for usage, but you'll become familiar with who they are
through researching and reading Daily Baseball Cafe content. You'll learn the
intricate differences between ballparks, and you might even find yourself
wanting to correct announcers who further misconceptions about how certain
parks play. You'll understand the "Twitterverse" meltdowns when Jordy Mercer is
inexplicably glued to the pine versus a left-handed pitcher. You don't have to
be a fan of baseball to play daily baseball games, but many of those who are
gaming are about the most passionate baseball fans you'll find on the planet.

Finally, while you're having fun, win a little (or a lot) of money. It's there
for the taking. The key is arming yourself with the necessary knowledge to beat
the gamers who are just "winging" it. The Fantasy Baseball Cafe and Daily
Fantasy Cafe will stock your tool belt with everything you need to regularly
win money in daily baseball games. Go ahead, add visiting the Fantasy Cafe to
your daily to-do lists, you'll be glad you did.

If you like season long fantasy leagues, you'll love keeper and dynasty
leagues. For starters, the draft process will be familiar to seasoned veterans
of season long leagues. Snake drafts and auctions are the norm in these
long-term leagues. The twist, you ask? Keeper and dynasty leagues require
gamers to carry players over from one season's team to the following year's
roster. The rules for keeping these players from season to season vary wildly
from league to league, but the basic principal of retaining players is the
same. Understanding more about keeper leagues and dynasty leagues will give you
a better idea of why they just might be right for you.

Poke around the Fantasy Baseball Cafe forums and you'll see countless posts
about keeper and dynasty league strategies, trade and free agent questions and
everything in between. Rules that are common for keeper leagues include
forfeiting a draft pick for the round a player was selected in, or forfeiting a
pick that's inflated by a set number of rounds. For example, a player selected
in 20th round would cost a 15th round pick to keep the following season if that
league used a five round inflation rule for keepers. The same idea applies to
auction drafts, and players are kept for their auction dollar amount or an
inflated amount. Other formats are simpler and allow a for a set number of
players to be kept with no cost attached. Conversely, more complex formats can
require gamers to award contracts to players. For instance, two players could
be kept for three years, another two for two years and four players for one
year in this hypothetical format. Basically, if you can dream it up, there is
probably already a keeper league out there created by someone else who had the
same vision.

Dynasty leagues are like keeper leagues on -- errr -- an energy drink. Instead
of keeping just a few players, dynasty leagues require owners to keep the vast
majority of their roster. They are basically the closest thing the fantasy
baseball community has to running a real team. Offseason trades are
commonplace, as there is basically no offseason in dynasty leagues, in many
instances.

Both keeper and dynasty leagues require careful planning not only for a current
season but also for future seasons. Do you want to go for broke this year? You
can, but it'll cost you for future seasons. That feeling of excitement you get
drafting a breakout player in season long re-draft leagues can be multiplied by
roughly 100 when doing the same in these formats. A keen understanding of the
minor leagues and prospects is also great for gaining an edge over your
competition in keeper and dynasty leagues. Gaining this knowledge can be fun,
too. Think about it, you're trying to determine who the future stars of Major
League Baseball are before they become stars. It's always a lot more fun to be
driving the bandwagon than to be hopping on it.

This is by no means an exhaustive explanation of keeper and dynasty leagues,
but if you weren't aware of them before you are now. The Fantasy Baseball Cafe
forums are the perfect place to better familiarize yourself with these league
formats in greater detail. If you're looking to setup your own league from
scratch, pick the brains of others in the community who are already playing in
keeper and dynasty leagues. Also, if you're looking to join a league or
advertise openings in your own league, be sure to check out the classifieds
section. As a keeper league gray beard having been playing in one for over a
decade now, I'd advocate giving at least one a whirl. They are a blast.

The foundation for a winning fantasy season doesn't start at the draft, it
starts before you it. You can't "win" your draft if you don't research. Tools
like the mock draft and player comparison ones available here at the Fantasy
Baseball Cafe are a great starting point for getting ready for "The real
McCoy." There is more that can also be done to get ready for your drafts,
though.

Creating position-by-position rankings is a great starting point for all
drafters to adopt. They can be in-depth, or simply tiering like players
together with a loose ranking within the tiers will help you immensely on draft
day. Putting these rankings together is the time consuming part, but it's fun.
Digging deeper into predictive statistics on the FanGraphs' player pages,
looking at PITCHf/x data available at Brooks Baseball and looking at PITCHf/x
leaderboards at Baseball Prospectus are a good way to lose track of hours
researching players in a sport you love. Furthermore, chatting with Cafeholics
on the forums and reading the articles published here are musts when creating
your rankings.

Entering drafts with rankings are the bare minimum for drafters. Knowing what
others think is a good way to maximize getting the most highly ranked players
from your lists. You can gain insight into what others think by checking ADP
data at sites such as FantasyPros. You'll also find expert rankings which will
give you a more thorough understanding of who your opponents might be
targeting. There is little worse in the fantasy sports world than getting
sniped on your breakout player because you weren't aware of where they
projected to go in drafts.

The idea of getting sniped segues nicely to the usefulness of reaching. You'll
often hear pundits decry reaching as a negative thing. Yes, it can be. Not
trusting your rankings, though, is worse. Why spend time constructing rankings
if you're simply going to fold to the consensus? You shouldn't be reaching on
players to the point where they need to hit your projected breakout in order to
be a good pick. For instance, if you peg a player as a second round value and
their ADP is in the eighth round, don't spend a second round pick on them. You
do still need to account for risk. The sound strategy is finding a happy
medium. That happy medium could come in the form of a fifth round pick in this
example. If you miss out on a breakout player because someone is willing to
reach beyond that, that's okay. Your rankings won't feature just one breakout
player, they'll feature a few. Move on to the next one.

The name of the game is drafting the team that can win the most games in
head-to-head leagues or accumulate the most points in roto formats. Don't lose
sight of the goal. Having a plan will help you reach this goal, but following
it rigidly when your draft throws you a curveball -- hardy har har -- won't
allow you to do so. Build some flexibility in to your plans. If you don't plan
to draft a pitcher early and your number one ranked starting pitcher is
available at the back of the first round or top of the second, you can still
snatch that surprising value up and return to your plan. Rigidity is the enemy
of gamers. Folks who are willing to roll with the punches while not entirely
abandoning their strategy are the ones who consistently end up with rosters
they're happy with at the end of drafts.

At the end of the day, fantasy drafts are meant to be fun. You only get to
draft once for each league each year. Be sure to engage in playful banter and
trash talking with your league mates. Give it back to league mates who harass
your "reach." Most likely those giving you a hard time about selecting a player
too early are the ones who are jealous they don't own him. When the draft is
over, be sure to follow Larry Legend's lead and ask who's playing for second
place.